


Stitches

by Merixcil



Series: Whumptober 2019 [11]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, Rope Bondage, bad medical practice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:42:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25591483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: Joker decides to complicate Bruce's night
Relationships: Joker (DCU) & Bruce Wayne
Series: Whumptober 2019 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1838356
Kudos: 4





	Stitches

The first swipe of the knife comes as no surprise. It’s Joker’s standard greeting, after all, even if they have at this stage spent most of the night together. But he tends to reassert himself once he’s decided that Bruce has successfully had the upper hand stolen away. 

The warehouse Joker is using as his base tonight is down by the docks, empty and enormous without the faintest hint of gasoline or popcorn hanging in the air. It must be new. Given that Bruce is already here, it must be very, very temporary. 

“Hah!” Joker points down to where the point of the blade has made short work of the Kevlar front of the Batsuit. Bruce has been trying out some new configurations, dispensing with some of the more weighty armour plates in an attempt to up his manoeuvrability, and the results so far have not been favourable. He looks down and sees the scratch worth of damage actually done to his person, and his nipple poking out from underneath the cut. 

“Whoopsie, Bats. Didn’t mean to compromise your modesty like that.” Joker leans back in, using the tip of the knife to push the sagging slash in the material back together. “I promise to protect you from the paparazzi if they should come yapping.”

“Can we just skip to the part where you make a mistake and I break free and we have a fistfight?” Bruce scowls up at him. “I’m not sure I have the energy for all this theatre tonight.”

“Darling!” Joker launches backwards, aghast. “Am I to believe that your eyes have wandered, that you no longer find me thrilling and beguiling.”

“You can believe what you want.” Bruce tells him. The truth is that he’s supposed to attend Damian’s parents evening tomorrow night and he’d really rather have an easy time of pretending to not be suffering from the exhaustion and stress of a secret double life if he can possibly help it. Not having to recover from whatever annoying but non-fatal injury Joker feels like throwing at him in the meantime would be spectacularly helpful on this front. 

Joker lets out a little puff of laughter and uncoils with a manic leer. “Well, if you put it like that.”

Bruce doesn’t have time to brace for it the second round, but he could hardly say that he shouldn’t have seen it coming. Joker lurches forward and sticks the knife straight through the now useless Kevlar and into Bruce’s abs. 

Snarling in shock, Bruce upsets the chair he’s been tied to without thinking and the knife drags through his skin. He hits the floor hard enough to raise a lump on the side of his head and with several choice words for the clown floating around the back of his tongue. 

Joker, of course, finds this all desperately funny. “My oh my, that was a bit of a cock up, eh? What did you think you were going to accomplish with that little stunt? did you expect the chair to spontaneously combust underneath you and allow you to break free?

Of course not. Bruce expected the knife to not be sticking into him when he went down. He curls forward on himself to get a better look at the injury and sees a thin stream of blood running down his side, though not fast enough to cause real worry. It looks like the knife didn’t get beyond the layer of fat under his skin, or pierce his abdominal wall, but it looks pretty spectacular all the same. 

Effortless as ever, Joker kicks the chair over so that Bruce is lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. he folds at the waist, leaning down to get a better look at the damage done and clicks his tongue. “Doesn’t look great, I’m not gonna lie to you, but I can probably fix it if you give me a minute.”

Joker’s attempts to fix things invariably make the problems he’s caused all the worse. Bruce tests the strength of the ropes binding his legs and is distraught to find that they’re nowhere near loose enough for him to get a good kick in. Like this, his hands are pinned behind him and it’s all the harder to escape from the chair. 

“Steady there, love. You’ll upset yourself again.” Joker hums, pecking Bruce lightly on the head over the front of the cowl before reaching into his front pocket to produce a needle and thread. 

Bruce’s stomach plummets, a singularly painful experience, given the circumstances. “No.”

“No?” Joker’s eyebrows rise to his bushy green hair. “I’m not sure I fully understand that word. Are you saying no, you don’t want to get better from this very horrible awful accident?”

“No!” Bruce replies through gritted teeth. “Put the needle down and get away from me.”

“No can do, my batamigo. I am compelled by the Hippocratic oath to help you heal from all harm.”

“The Hippocratic oath says you should do no harm.”

“Details, details.” Joker waves Bruce down. “Now, how shall we put you back together?”

“Without that needle.”

Joker pretends not to hear him, reaching down to pinch the edges of Bruce’s wound together. At first he just seems bemused that they won’t hold on their own, but then he starts fiddling with it, trying to pull skin from one end to the other and creating little pleats. 

The noises Bruce makes in response are thoroughly undignified and go totally ignored. 

In the end, he has to beg for it, just a little. “Listen, if you’re going to sew me up with that filthy needle and thread would you please just get on and do it?”

Justification: The sooner it’s done the sooner he can go home and undo it. And the sooner it’s done, the sooner Joker will stop tugging his skin around like it’s made for moulding. 

Joker shrugs and sniggers, raising the needle high so that it catches the light from a streetlamp coming in through one of the warehouses upper windows. “You’re wish is my command, oh Batman! Please try to hold applause till the end of the show, though I do give you permission to laugh if you find me extra funny. I tend to leave people in stitches.”

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally posted as part of a multi chaptered 'whumptober' fic that I'm trying to split up. If you think you've read it before, you probably have


End file.
